…All that felt like ancient history now.
The minute hand of the clock made a few revolutions until it was lunchtime.
“Say, Mylene?” Colette asked with restraint. Colette…had called my name with restraint.
“Yes, Princess?”
Her anxious tugging of my sleeve vividly expressed her unusual bewilderment. I never thought I’d see such a side to Colette. It was like, she was…softer than I thought?
Colette gave the source of her bewilderment a hard sideways stare. I followed her gaze to find a pillar—or what could hardly be called one. Rather, it was a protrusion on the wall of the hallway. A petite girl was peeking out from behind it.
Needless to say, it was the same blond maiden who had been shooting an impassioned stare earlier. It felt a bit strange to call a young lady like her a “maiden,” but the tender look to her face subconsciously evoked such a word.
Also, the sloppy way in which she was spying on us and the way she scurried to hide herself reminded me of a little rabbit.
“What in the world is she doing…?”
“Don’t ask me, Princess…”
She was the root of Colette’s bewilderment. The way she was hiding was just too fishy. Our little spy was starting to attract the stares of those around her.
Gods of the Moon, my ass. Now I feel stupid for being so wary of her this morning.
“What shall we do? Do you want me to go talk to her?” Albert asked hesitantly, not out of respect for me, but to our painfully obvious pursuer.
There’s no point in letting her go about her business… As I watched the girl, who was still drawing ample attention to herself, there was no way in hell I could see her belonging to the same group as Pearlman: a cult of gifted mages who wanted to—and could—bring about the end of the world.
If she were playing dumb on purpose, I’d have to reluctantly commend her on a scheme well played—
“Oh— You needn’t trouble yourself, Prince Albert,” I replied. “It appears it’s me she wishes to see. I’ll have a little chat with her at the next bend in the hallway.”
I relayed my plan to them in a hushed voice. If the girl really was spying on me, it would be beyond foolish to voice my plans out loud, but from the way she was acting, I didn’t think I needed to worry about it.
As we turned the next bend in the hallway, I spun around. And there she was, the little maiden, scurrying toward me.
“……!!”
When faced with the three pairs of eyes staring down at her, she went stiff and gasped slightly. The way she froze in shock made her look even more like a rabbit.
I forced the persuasive sting out of my voice and spoke gently to her. “So…I think you’ve been following us for a while. Can we help you with something?”
Out of my periphery, I saw that Albert and even Colette were grinning kindly through their discomfort. Pity was a powerful emotion—it let even the most insolent princess give someone a warm, concerned smile.
And as for our little rabbit who found herself suddenly surrounded by the objects of her surveillance—
“I…I dunno what you’re talking about…”
She uttered this only after letting her eyeballs dance to and fro and back to my eyes several times before finally looking away.
It was an excuse so sloppy that I would hesitate to call it deception. And her nerve was so weak she couldn’t even look her subject in the eye.
For fuck’s sake… Why was I ever wary of her?
To be fair, I guess it was still possible that she was unknowingly being used by Gods of the Moon or somebody affiliated with them…
“Er, I’m not sure what I should do. Do you have any concerns I can address?”
In as considerate a tone as I could manage, I let her know she had no need to hide from us. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m not sure that was the right move. I’d never experienced being kind to somebody who was obviously terrified. As I stood there, wondering if I was coming on too strong, I started to feel stupid.
…But I don’t think I misread the first vibe I got from her.
When she heard my persuasive tone, the maiden’s eyes darted to and fro again for a while, then sharpened into a clearly antagonistic gaze.
“Mylene Petule…! You’re not fooling me!”
And with that, she turned around and ran—with what was probably all her might. And I just stood there, confounded. I didn’t even have an opportunity to ask what she’d meant.
“Mylene…did you do something to her?” Colette asked, shaking me out of my daze.
“I have no memory whatsoever…that’s all there is to say,” I answered reflexively. “I got into all sorts of scrapes the minute I first set foot on this campus.”
But then I bit my tongue. Because truth be told, I did have some idea.
While the upperclassmen and puffed-up kids had stopped picking fights with me as of late, after I first joined Zelfore, I’d made a name for myself as a troublemaker.
That being said, I never beat up anybody without just cause. And since I highly doubted the little rabbit was one of them, she either had a grudge on their behalf or there was some misunderstanding. Either of those possibilities were entirely feasible.
When she’d said, “You’re not fooling me,” she was probably referencing all the supporters I’d garnered recently. As in, I’m tricking everyone into liking me, but I can’t fool her.
“Hum…? But she looked overly vengeful, considering.”
Colette was right. I couldn’t imagine what sort of nonsense she’d been fed to make her spit out the kind of cliché line a villain would say. That’s just how rigid her guard was around me.
At the very least, she was probably trying to show me how she wouldn’t lash out at me as long as I didn’t attack her first.
Albert scratched his chin and voiced a concern that was outside our trains of thought. “Hmm…well, one thing’s for certain, Miss Mylene: I got the sense from her gaze that the circumstances behind her grudge were anything but ordinary.”
From the way he talked, it sounded like he knew her well.
“Prince Albert…are you familiar with her?” Colette asked, voicing my own question.
Albert looked bewildered. “Um, yes? Of course I do, she’s in our class. Princess Colette, might I suggest you try prying your eyes off Miss Mylene every now and then?”
“I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t know her either,” I admitted.
“M-Miss Mylene, not you too?! She’s Melissa! The Priestess of Eltania! Haven’t you had interactions with her as God’s Gift…?”
Yeah, I guess it really was messed up of me to not know the name of a fellow classmate…
But just when I started to feel a little guilty—though Albert’s answer made sense to me on one level—my spine felt like it was hit with a ball of ice.
Now I see…if we’d met before I became Mylene, her attitude would make sense. If she had crossed paths with the Mylene from back then—who was hated as a viper even by her own servants—she would surely sense something incredibly amiss about the way I was behaving now. I don’t know how the encounter between her and the former Mylene had played out, but it was surely more than traumatizing enough to fill her with hatred and hypervigilance.
But what made my spine run even colder was her name. Melissa of Eltania—that was a name I did remember. How could I ever forget it?
“By Melissa…do you mean Melissa Tullio du Lulutrois?”
Unless they happened to be name twins, it had to be—
“Yes, that’s the one. So you do know her.”
“Yes… Yes, I do. My memory of her is hazy but there.”
She’d started that war. The beginning of the end—she was the populist who the Mylene of my first life had executed.
And she’s the Priestess of Eltania now?
The duchess who was deeply trusted by her people and resisted Mylene’s tyranny until the bitter end—she was the Priestess of Eltania.
And here I was starting to get anxious because Gods of the Moon have been in the shadows lately.
Judging by Melissa and Mylene’s relationship in the former timeline and by the way she’d just acted around me now, it was highly likely that Melissa had gotten wise to something early on.
“I would love to learn more about her.”
She might have a key piece of information I needed to know. As an icy excitement filled my veins, I raised the corners of my mouth and showed my teeth.
“Too bad…from the way she was acting, it will likely be difficult to get her to talk,” Colette said.
I quickly slumped. Colette’s right. She’s a skittish rabbit girl…I don’t do well with that type. Though if she’s a citizen of Eltania, maybe I could use my connection with Albert to get to her…
“Well. How shall we deal with her…?”
Scaring the shit out of people was my specialty. But dealing with a timid rabbit without frightening her was a new challenge. If I made her cry, my campus life would be difficult moving forward… I just might need to carefully draw up my plan of battle.
As a new lead and a new obstacle unexpectedly fell into my lap, I heaved a sigh.